Hi everybody. I'm new to the smartphone game, so allow me to apologize in advance if I'm asking a monstrously stupid question here, but I've been reading up on things and getting some conflicting information.
My situation is that I'm switching from a feature phone on Verizon to a Total Wireless prepaid plan, not entirely willingly. They offer a BYOP option, and state that only 3G Verizon phones will be compatible. They are a TracFone owned company, who started out with the same 3G only limitation only to phase in 4G LTE service as they went along, and reps have made comments on their Facebook page that they plan to make 4G available eventually as well.
I thought I'd pick up a used GS3 off ebay as I really like them and my budget is limited, before I learned Verizon's models are all 4G capable. I called a couple different reps with IMEIs to check compatibility and all told me the numbers checked out, but some said only 3G models would work while one said 3G or 4G were acceptable. They all sounded like they were just reading off their monitors, and none would elaborate on anything, so they don't seem like they're really up on the game plan.
The options for 3G only phones are pretty limited, and I'd hate to buy something and have them introduce 4G service in a few months and not be able to access it.
I know Verizon's phones can't even access their own LTE network without their SIM cards and most people naturally aren't going to include those when they sell their phone, so again, please forgive me if this is all going over my head here, but wouldn't any Verizon smartphone without a SIM card have 4G effectively disabled? And am I right in my understanding that an MVNO like Total Wireless that's leasing Verizon's network would be doing whatever necessary programming to the phone without needing to provide a new SIM card of their own, since Verizon is CDMA and they're not accessing Verizon's LTE network anyway?
And if not, if it's just something more fundamental and code based, would installing one of the apps I've been reading about on here or rooting the phone to where one disabled 4G in the phone, as some have done here to save battery usage, work to get around whatever the problem is?
I understand completely that being experts in an OS and developers doesn't mean that anybody here knows about the intricacies of why MVNOs have the ridiculous problems they do and if nobody can help that's cool. I've just been juggling search terms and reading about the fundamentals of how all this works and I feel like I need to ask some people who really know their way around everything to see if I'm even grasping all these concepts right or not.
So thank you all in advance for any help you can give me, even if it's just in understanding this better if I've got some of it all wrong. :-\
My situation is that I'm switching from a feature phone on Verizon to a Total Wireless prepaid plan, not entirely willingly. They offer a BYOP option, and state that only 3G Verizon phones will be compatible. They are a TracFone owned company, who started out with the same 3G only limitation only to phase in 4G LTE service as they went along, and reps have made comments on their Facebook page that they plan to make 4G available eventually as well.
I thought I'd pick up a used GS3 off ebay as I really like them and my budget is limited, before I learned Verizon's models are all 4G capable. I called a couple different reps with IMEIs to check compatibility and all told me the numbers checked out, but some said only 3G models would work while one said 3G or 4G were acceptable. They all sounded like they were just reading off their monitors, and none would elaborate on anything, so they don't seem like they're really up on the game plan.
The options for 3G only phones are pretty limited, and I'd hate to buy something and have them introduce 4G service in a few months and not be able to access it.
I know Verizon's phones can't even access their own LTE network without their SIM cards and most people naturally aren't going to include those when they sell their phone, so again, please forgive me if this is all going over my head here, but wouldn't any Verizon smartphone without a SIM card have 4G effectively disabled? And am I right in my understanding that an MVNO like Total Wireless that's leasing Verizon's network would be doing whatever necessary programming to the phone without needing to provide a new SIM card of their own, since Verizon is CDMA and they're not accessing Verizon's LTE network anyway?
And if not, if it's just something more fundamental and code based, would installing one of the apps I've been reading about on here or rooting the phone to where one disabled 4G in the phone, as some have done here to save battery usage, work to get around whatever the problem is?
I understand completely that being experts in an OS and developers doesn't mean that anybody here knows about the intricacies of why MVNOs have the ridiculous problems they do and if nobody can help that's cool. I've just been juggling search terms and reading about the fundamentals of how all this works and I feel like I need to ask some people who really know their way around everything to see if I'm even grasping all these concepts right or not.
So thank you all in advance for any help you can give me, even if it's just in understanding this better if I've got some of it all wrong. :-\
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